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WEDDINGS: VOWS; Jessie Chang and Jahja Ling

A GRADUATE student at the Manhattan School of Music, Jessie Ching Ching Chang is known among colleagues for playing the piano so lyrically that her performances keep you from drifting off and composing grocery lists in your head. ''She has a very special personality on the piano,'' Constance Keene, one of her professors, said. ''She takes you on a musical voyage with her.''

Ms. Chang, who grew up in Taiwan, now lives near Carnegie Hall and spends her days in a disciplined, even rhythmic way. ''Her life is really simple,'' said Jenny Chen, a French horn player and a friend. ''She goes to school, she goes home, she reads books, she goes to concerts and on Sunday, she goes to church.''

In April 1999, during a Sunday service at the Chinese Community Church of New York on West 96th Street, she was a singer in a choir being conducted by Jahja Ling. Mr. Ling, whose first name is pronounced YA-yah, is the resident conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra. He attended services at the Chinese Community Church in the early 1970's after leaving his hometown of Jakarta, Indonesia, to study piano at the Juilliard School. Now, when he's in New York with the Cleveland Orchestra or as a guest conductor for the New York Philharmonic, he always returns to the church.

Mr. Ling, a widower with two grown sons, is known as a scholarly maestro with a loose, friendly manner. ''He's a live wire on the podium,'' said Donald Rosenberg, the classical music critic of The Cleveland Plain Dealer. ''He studied a little bit with Bernstein, and some of that rubbed off. He dances on the podium, he smiles a lot at the musicians, sometimes he even turns around and looks at the audience.''

On the day he met Ms. Chang, Mr. Ling recalled that he ''was impressed with her attention and musical feeling -- she really had eye contact with me.'' Overhearing this, Ms. Chang swiftly added: ''Of course I was looking at him! He was the conductor. I had to follow him.''

He called her a few days later and became even more intrigued by her when she said she loved Bruckner's Symphony No. 9. ''That impressed me right away,'' he remembered. ''I said, 'Wow, I can't even conduct that!' It's a great musical masterpiece. I feel I have to be a bit older to understand that piece, but she just loved it. She's a really profound thinker, which is why I adore her.''

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Eventually, she began traveling with him -- he is also the music director of the Florida Orchestra and the artistic director of the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan. It is a life she stepped into gracefully as well as gamely. She ate snake on one trip. And she rarely complains of jet lag or of having to attend one black-tie reception after another.

''She has this rare quality of being able to handle everything on the highest level -- whether she's packing a toothbrush or discussing the tempo on the third movement of a Mahler symphony,'' Ms. Keene said. A year after they met, Ms. Chang told Mr. Ling: ''If you want to propose, you've got to have a carriage and a helicopter. Otherwise, there's no wedding.''

On Jan. 1, she rode a horse-drawn carriage to the Chinese Community Church for a wedding that included performances by many friends of pieces ranging from a melodic love song by Edward MacDowell to the grand march from Verdi's ''Aida.'' ''Musically speaking, it was like a dream,'' the bridegroom said.

For the reception, the couple and guests sailed on a motor yacht that slalomed through the ice on the Hudson, with the couple playing pieces for four hands on a Steinway. When the boat docked, they boarded a helicopter, which flew low over the boat so that the bride could toss her bouquet to guests. (The calla lilies landed in the water.) Ms. Keene said of the couple: ''It was a meeting of the minds and of what was important to their inner beings. Religion was important, music was important, and it gelled.''

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A version of this article appears in print on January 7, 2001, on Page 9009007 of the National edition with the headline: WEDDINGS: VOWS; Jessie Chang and Jahja Ling. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe